


What I Am To You (Is Not Real)

by samalander



Category: ST:AOS - Fandom
Genre: AU, Dystopia, F/M, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-26
Updated: 2011-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:11:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the bombs went off, humanity rebuilt, and the North American Directorate is headed by the powerful McCoy clan. Now James Kirk and Nyota Uhura have chosen to kidnap Prince Leonard McCoy to make their voices heard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What I Am To You (Is Not Real)

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://trekreversebang.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://trekreversebang.livejournal.com/)**trekreversebang**.
> 
> This fic does deal with terrorism and a dystopian world. I tried to create sympathetic characters within it, but please don't think I condone their actions. Any sins they commit are theirs, and I promise I'm over here judging as harshly as you are.
> 
> As always, my fairy godmothers [](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/profile)[**emmypenny**](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/) and [](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/)**theoreticalpixy** helped me through this, every aching step of the way. I don't know what on Earth I would ever do without you two to listen to me whine about minutea.  
>  Thanks as well to my beta, [](http://random00b.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://random00b.livejournal.com/)**random00b** , who made this mess readable and I cannot say enough good things about her. Seriously.  
> And of course, check out [](http://ryuutchi.livejournal.com/profile)[**ryuutchi**](http://ryuutchi.livejournal.com/)'s gorgeous art/mix that this is for, [here](http://ryuutchi.livejournal.com/315336.html). She's an absolute doll, and I really loved working with her.
> 
> Title is from Damien Rice's "Volcano" which is as close to a theme song as this story has.
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://ryuutchi.livejournal.com/315336.html)  
> Art by [](http://ryuutchi.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://ryuutchi.livejournal.com/)**ryuutchi**. Click for more awesomeness.

**

PROLOGUE: BEFORE THE BEGINNING

**

As a child, Leonard McCoy often felt strongly about things - it wasn't fair that Peri Davidson go to be Savior of the Directorate when they played, it was wrong to make a child eat broccoli, it was downright criminal to send him to bed before he'd finished the chapter in his book. His mother, Clora, called him Sir Leonard, Prince of Opinions, when he got overly adamant about something. Privately, she feared his oncoming adolescence.

When he was thirteen, Leonard was told his grandfather, Horatio, had passed away. This was news to Leonard, as the young man had never been informed that he _had_ a grandfather called Horatio. The subsequent move to Atlanta and being named as Prince Leonard Horatio David Rutledge McCoy, Duke of the Carolinas and Protector of New New York was, in a word, overwhelming.

Clora explained to her son, as gently as she could, that he was in danger as a prince, that there were assassination attempts, that the need for secrecy overshadowed his ability to keep any secrets. They had been planning to tell him, she said, just as soon as he could be told.

Life at court was strange to Leonard, not least of all because his father, who he had thought of as a just and kind man - a doctor, for goodness sake! - seemed to grow hardhearted on the throne, seemed to turn away more supplicants than he saw, spent evening meals speaking ill of his subjects, his advisers, and anything else that came to his mind, including, at times, Leonard. The young Prince did his best to hold his tongue, did his best to not overtly butt heads with his father, but still there were rows, there were disagreements, there were angry storm-outs that ruined quiet family moments.

At the age of seventeen, Leonard embarked n the study of medicine, like his father before him. He did well at the pursuit, excelling in his classes and meeting a young commoner named Jocelyn Darnell. Leonard announced his intent to marry Lady Jocelyn when he turned twenty, much to the chagrin of his parents.

Clora wept at the idea of her son marrying anyone, and David raged at the fact of his intended's lineage. There had been plans for a treaty with the Western Kingdoms, a marriage to the powerful Sulu clan out of Francisco, but Sir Leonard, Prince of Opinions, would not hear of it, would not allow his father to change his mind.

When David finally lost his cool, an hour into what he would style a "discussion", Leonard threw a punch, knocking his father down and chipping his tooth. The guards were on him in an instant, holding the Prince back from his father.

David came up laughing, gesturing for Pike and his security guard to unhand his son.

"Well done, Leonard," he laughed. "Good to see there's a spine in there after all."

It didn't fix everything between them; Leonard still disagreed with his father often, and David still ruled the Directorate the way he saw fit. But until the day he died, David wore his chipped tooth as a badge of honor. When asked, by toadie reporters and foreign dignitaries about his injury, the King would smile.

"My son will be king next," he'd say, "and this proves that he'll stand up for our people."

Quietly, Leonard thought it was a crock of shit. But he married Jocelyn and finished med school and took a place in his father's Cabinet, and, on the eve of his thirtieth birthday, he met a couple of people who would change his life.

* * *

Leonard was thirsty. He was tired and filthy, and he ached, but mostly the inside of his mouth tasted like old cotton. Swallowing what little saliva he could muster burned his throat and he choked on that as much as the idea that, if these people holding him were as inept as he thought, he could die of thirst long before they got whatever it was they wanted.

He pictured his kidneys abstractly, like the two red bulbs in the mannequins that graced every one of his Biology classes. Thought about them losing fluid, the waste building up, the toxicity of his blood. Fuck, he had never even practiced medicine, even with that fancy sheepskin on his wall, but he knew what lack of water did to a body.

He also knew what a panic attack was and figured that lying on a grimy floor in the middle of god knows where, kept hostage by god knows who, was not the best time to have one. There had to be better times.

He heard the steps first, light and quick, growing with volume as they approached his little square of filth. It was the lighter one, the one he thought was probably a woman. There were two main captors, but as it was hard to imagine they could pull this off with so few people, he assumed he simply hadn't met all of them yet. They'd kept him blindfolded, which he supposed was a good thing. If he never saw their faces, he'd never be able to ID them. Maybe they'd let him live.

Her hands were cool, like someone who had spent a long time handling metal - like a gun, fuck - and he shivered as she slid her palm behind his neck, untied his gag and propped up his head, but he swallowed gratefully all the same when she pressed the canteen to his lips.

"Thank you," he gasped, when she pulled the canteen back.

He didn't expect her to respond. He expected her to do what she always did: replace the gag, get up, and walk away. But a voice spoke from the direction in which he imagined the door of his cell.

"Does he always thank you?"

The voice was male, and Leonard could hear the smirk. It also sounded vaguely familiar, but he chalked that up to however long he had gone without hearing a human voice. It seemed unlikely that he would have run into any terrorists or kidnappers at court, but one could never be too sure of such things.

"Yeah," the woman replied, and the man's laugh burned Leonard's cheeks and set fire to his stomach, though he wasn't sure why.

"What a good little Prince," the man sneered.

"Go fuck yourself," Leonard offered. He knew it was a bad idea. He knew that, someday, someone would sit down to make a list of Ultimate Bad Ideas and "telling your kidnapper to fuck himself" would be somewhere near the top. But Leonard had never been good at impulse control, or not telling people when they were idiots.

To his surprise, the slap came from the woman, her cool hand leaving a stinging trail across his face. He cried out at the sting and he almost missed the man's matching shout.

"Ny!"

Rushing footsteps preceded a new pair of hands, which found Leonard's cheeks and turned his face back and forth. He had imagined that the man - who, by the calluses on his hands was a worker or laborer of some kind - was old or fat or stank, but something in the gentleness of the touch threw his off guard.

"Don't break him, Ny!" the man scolded. Then, so quickly that later Leonard wasn't sure just how it happened, the man's watchband got caught on the blindfold and he found himself looking at his captors for the first time.

The face he was staring into was handsome, but it was hard to say _why_. Later, when Leonard was asked to describe his captor, he could only vividly explain blue eyes and some kind of brown-blond hair and pink lips. The woman - Ny - was more striking; high forehead and straight, wide nose, black hair and skin the color of the willow bark his nanny used to grind up for headache powder. Her face would stay with him long after the man's faded into two sparks of blue.

"Fuck."

It wasn't coherent or brilliant, but it was the only thing Leonard could say. He had been banking on not seeing these people, praying not to have their identities. Now they had a reason to kill him.

"Nice to see you too, Lenny," the man sneered. Leonard was taken aback. He had never been _sneered_ at before, not to his face. He stared at the man for a moment in wonder and a little bit of fear.

"Prince Leonard Horatio David Rutledge McCoy." Leonard said, inclining his head because he couldn't extend a hand. He was proud that his voice didn't shake.

The man blinked. The woman looked confused.

"That's my name," McCoy said. "Leonard McCoy."

His captors continued to stare. Finally the woman spoke.

"Yes, and?"

McCoy smiled. He had a fetching smile, he'd been told. "I don't know your names."

The man laughed. The woman looked surprised. After what could only be called a long, uncomfortable moment, Leonard watched the reality of his sincerity bloom across the woman's face.

"You really think we'd tell you?"

Leonard shrugged. "I like to meet my subjects," he grinned. "And, by the way, you need to up your water rations if you don't want me to die on you."

"Damn," the man breathed. "Put the blindfold back on. And gag the son of a bitch, I don't want to hear more of his nonsense."

Leonard seethed quietly as the woman did as she was told.

* * *

On a skinny cot, her face pressed against the pillow and her back to the wall, Nyota Uhura dreamed.

She didn't dream the way most people dream, unconscious brain throwing images together from stress, trying to make sense from a world that was anything but rational. Uhura dreamed of things she had seen.

She dreamed of a childhood, training to be a dancer in the city once called Montreal, now called Ethelburg for her hostage's great-great grandmother. She dreamed of the day it all changed, the day she stopped carrying her toe shoes and tights in her bag on the way to the studio and started carrying a gun. She'd been chosen to dance the role of Queen Clora in the Regent's Ballet, and she was turning 14 on opening night. It was going to be a big year.

The smell came first; the burning, wretched smell. She broke into a run at the end of the block, flat-out sprinting for her studio, the studio her mother had worked so hard to build when Nyota's father had died. Bystanders stood uselessly gawking at the way the ash fell onto the pavement from the fire eating up the smooth floors and the barre and the little bit of Nyota's childhood that she'd secreted away inside it. She could never forget the screams, the heat, nor the shock of finding her mother's delicate leg, foot still arched and encased in its satin shoe, lying lonely on the ground.

Nyota woke with a start, Jim Kirk's hand on her shoulder.

"You were talking," Kirk said, the only explanation he ever offered when he woke her, and she nodded, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"Is it my shift?"

She wanted to say more; she wanted to tell him about dancing and the ballet and her mother's soft hands, braiding her hair. She imagined a world where they didn't need to do things like kidnap someone just to make a point, a world where they were free to meet in bars and laugh and joke.

On some level, she still entertained a fantasy that they'd both survive this insane endeavor. She wanted to believe that the van they drove into the harbor wouldn't be dredged up and traced to her, that the Prince wouldn't turn them in, that she'd see Snowy Owl become the glorious state it could be if left to its own devices.

But instead she watched him nod, then stood.

She didn't tell Kirk about the bombing, how she sought out the resistance cell to take revenge, only to learn that it wasn't them, or about Spock's steady hands as he trained her, or coming back to the flat they had shared to find the place in shambles and her lover gone.

Kirk didn't need to know that. He just needed to keep sending ransom notes to Pike and keep out of her hair.

Kirk curled up on the cot she had just vacated; he slept in a little ball like a hamster, arms wrapped around him as though he was trying to keep out the cold. Nyota sat inside the door of the Prince's room, the gun Spock gave her heavy in her hands. She began to take it apart and clean it.

They were a rag-tag duo, that was sure, and the fact that they'd pulled this kidnapping off was a testament to their talents.

Kirk was the planner; he had a tactical sense that rivaled anyone Nyota had ever met. He was just a man who lost his family and wanted them back. Kirk wasn't burdened by an excess of tragedy; born in the wastelands of the Central Kingdom, fatherless in his youth, he grew up like many in the grasslands did, wild and reckless. But he was brilliant, intellect shining like afternoon sunlight on a lake. His careful investigation into the habits and rituals of the royal family had taken less than six months; with the tech they'd stolen or bought off the crazy Scottsman Spock had known allowing them to spy as efficiently as any of the big terror cells in Old Snowy Owl, it was all they‘d needed.

Nyota was the muscle, she thought, the one with the gun and the knowledge. Dancing had made her lithe and strong, anger made her ruthless. Spock had trained her well, taught her to channel her rage like a pinpoint, showed her how to turn her fury cold and kill a man with a touch. She knew when it came down to it, she'd be the one to kill McCoy. Kirk would try to stop her, but she would be the one with blood on her hands by the time this was all over.

They were an unlikely alliance, but they worked. They had worked. Now they had to survive the rest.

* * *

Leonard had lost track of time almost immediately.

When he thought back on it later, he realized that he was being deliberately disconcerted. His captors fed him on no set schedule that he could decipher, there was no pattern to how they let him relieve himself or when they came to check on him. There were once windows in his room; he could feel the breeze, but there was no sense of light. That meant wherever they were keeping him was long abandoned and boarded up. He guessed from his internal clock that he'd been there at least a day, but it was an imprecise measurement. He wasn't used to not having people tell him things, being catered to. So he gauged time in the sandwiches his captors fed him, the dry pieces of bread signifying something like a few hours. Two sandwiches were a day; he was pretty sure that was somewhat close to reality.

He wished for twentieth century technology; the fabled trackers that people had implanted in them would allow his security chief, Pike, and his cavalry to ride in, guns blazing and rescue imminent. It had all been lost in the wars; technology had eroded until it seemed more like magic and myth than something even remotely plausible.

On what he gauged to be the third day, what he hoped was at least forty-eight hours in, Leonard felt someone sit next to him.

"You've seen my face." It was the man, sparks of blue, soft and gravelly voice.

Leonard nodded, the gag not helping with the whole "chatting" thing the man was trying initiate. He felt hands; those same rough hands, reaching around to undo his blindfold. Leonard blinked into the light and the blue eyes and the shock of a human face after what felt like an age and a half.

"And my associate's. Plus, I said her name. So, no use in this thing anymore. Let me tell you a few things."

The man shifted his weight to settle in, fidgeting with the material that had been around Leonard's face. It seemed almost endearing how he twined it between his fingers, the kind of nervous tic one didn't expect to see in a kidnapping terrorist.

"About a year ago, my nephew was shot," the man said, "and my brother and his wife were arrested because their son was caught in treasonous activities. You know what kind of treasonous activities an 11-year-old gets up to? He had a can of spray paint, and was in the process of writing 'King David is a tyrant' on a wall. Your goons - the men in your service - have the right, under your laws, to shoot traitors on sight, and their families forfeit the rights of citizens. An 11-year-old, Lenny. Do you know what that did to my mother?"

Leonard had heard these stories before. He's heard the screams of people who hurled eggs at his cars, the whines of the supplicants to his father's throne.

He didn't believe it then, and he didn't believe it now. Things weren't ideal. There was no Utopia. But his father was a just ruler, like Leonard would be in his time, and if people were rough and cruel, then they could blame it on the imperial soldiers until they turned blue. It didn't make any of it true. People acted in the name of the King who had no right, no authority recognized by the crown, and people blamed the King. That did not make him culpable nor did it make sense to kidnap the Crown Prince.

Leonard couldn't say any of that, of course. He could grunt, so he did.

"My mother wasted away with grief. Died eight months ago. So you're looking at a man who is alone in the world."

Leonard was amazed at the man's candor. He had the Prince of the North America Alliance tied on his floor. He would die for that crime, and his family, if they were really in prison, would be killed as well. And he was bearing his soul, making it that much easier for Leonard to find him when he got out of there and punish him.

"My name is James Kirk. You're here because I want my brother back. And his wife. George Samuel, Jr. and Aurelan Kirk. And when they walk free again, so will you."

Lithe fingers reached up to untie the gag at the back of Leonard's head, and pressed the canteen to his lips. After a long draft of water, the man pulled back.

"Any empty promises, Prince Lenny?"

"No," Leonard rasped. His throat was still dry, but he was geting used to the feeling of thirst. He was also resigning himself to the idea that all he would have was what this man - James - and the mysterious "Ny" chose to give to him. "I don't negotiate with terrorists."

James laughed. "You're the terrorist, sugar. Shooting 11-year-old boys and detaining their parents? And don't think for a second I'm the only one who has this problem with you."

"Why are you talking to me?"

"Because you've been here four days, Lenny, and I thought you might like to know why."

Four days. Then he was 30. That was why he hadn't fought when they grabbed him, let the sack fall over his face and allowed himself to be manhandled into their vehicle. Because every year Jocelyn threw him a surprise party. One that always started with a fake kidnapping.

When the burlap had slammed over his eyes and his captors had jostled him into the car, Leonard had laughed and gone with it. He hadn't minded the wrinkles they put into his dress uniform as it bunched under him in the back of the vehicle, stains collecting on the white jacket. He hadn't known anything was _wrong_ , per se, until they got him here, hands still fastened behind his back, and gagged him.

He imagined a decorated party hall, guests dressed to the nines and laughing, interrupted by the announcement of his kidnapping. The kingdom's elite, fiddling while he burned. He imagined Pike waking Joanna, bundling her in blankets and her pink coat, and taking her to one of the safehouses, Jo scared but not crying, not his little girl. And Jocelyn would be delivered by other security forces, maybe his mother, too. They'd sit up with Pike, still in their finery, Joanna falling asleep in pure exhaustion in her mother's lap as they all sat silently. They'd sit up all night, waiting for any news.

He decided not to picture a funeral, not to think about caskets and flowers and songs of lament.

"It's my birthday," he said, trying to avoid the mental image of his daughter dropping lilies onto a fresh grave.

"I know," James said. "We all know."

Leonard shook his head. His parents had always told him he was just like everyone else. They'd enforced his normalcy, the idea that one person was just like another, except he was born to rule. His lineage was an accident of blood, an accident of fate, and someone else could just have easily had it handed to them, but this was the first time Leonard tried to think of his life as anything besides a Prince. As a common man like James, someone with a brother whom they loved enough to kidnap a man for.

"What do you do," Leonard asked, "when you're not absconding with royalty?"

"I plan how to abscond."

Strange enough that this man would even know the word abscond, let alone have the wherewithal to use it to sass a royal.

"You have calloused hands, I felt them. Ny's are smooth and cool. You work with them, maybe lumber?"

James laughed. "I fix cars. Or I did. Before you killed Peter and took Sam."

"I didn't kill any-"

"They used your name."

"That doesn't mean I condone it," Leonard snapped. "It doesn't mean I made that law or say how it gets enforced!"

"But your father does," Jim shrugged.

" I'm not my father!"

Jim pinched the bridge of his nose, struggling to take deep breaths.

"But if he wants you back, he'll be changing a few things."

It occurred to Leonard that arguing with this man was like running against the waves. One really needn't bother.

"And Ny?" he asked, deciding this was a time when a small concession on his part might allow for tactical missteps on the young terrorist's part.

"What about her?"

"Does she want your brother back, too?"

"No," James sighed. "She's from up North. Snowy Owl."

Leonard nodded. The place had been called Quebec, before the wars and the alliance and the ascendancy of the McCoys. Now Old Snowy Owl was a hotbed of separatists and thugs. The people based there tended to ally with one major gang or another, but the preeminent groups of separatists was called Strigidae. They thought they were very clever for naming themselves after the ancient scientific name for owls.

"So you're Strigs?"

James laughed. "No, we don't have that much free time to flap our gums. We're not aligned."

"Right. So, you want your brother back and she wants Old Owl to be its own country? What do the others want?"

"Nice try," James scoffed, and Leonard felt his heart sink as the other man stood, shoving the gag back between Leonard's teeth and tying it securely behind his head. "But I think you know more than enough for now."

Leonard leaned back against the wall, watching his strange captor leave the room. There was a lot to think about and he was pretty sure he had a lot of time to do it. David McCoy didn't negotiate with terrorists, kidnapped son or not, so Leonard would have to get himself out of this.

First, he had to figure out how.

* * *

With planning and execution of the kidnapping complete, Jim found his jobs to be mostly "go check on the prisoner" or "why don't you send Pike another note?" Uhura clearly styled herself the leader of their little duo, and Jim had to admit that, while they both had the sheer resolution to pull this off, she had the training and the knowledge of insurgency. He mostly knew how to replace a fuel pump.

That was why the conversations with McCoy started. Jim knew Nyota wouldn't approve, would tell him not to get chummy with the prisoner, remember who he was and what he'd done. Yet, more than once, Jim had walked in for his shift to find Leonard telling a story--something about the palace or being a royal--and Nyota pretending not to listen.

He knew they had to avoid pity and compassion – this was a McCoy, the enemy. But Jim had a hard time thinking of the man stashed in an abandoned classroom as the Evil Prince Leonard he had worked up in his brain, had a hard time seeing him as the man who destroyed Jim's family.

So they struck up an uneasy something that might have been a friendship in another life; in this one, neither man knew how to name it without discarding everything they were to each other. Jim even removed the gag when he was on watch; with an alert Prince to converse with, he began to understand the man's appeal. Not that he would ever admit it to Nyota.

"Peanut butter," Jim said, sitting down next to his captive and holding out a sandwich. It was day seven of the hostage situation and Pike was still silent on their ransom demands.

"Thanks," Leonard replied, leaning forward to take a bite from the proffered food.

"You're not going to ask me to undo your hands?" Jim looked dubious, but Leonard chewed his bite and swallowed before replying.

"No. You'll just tell me no, anyway."

"Says who? Today might be the day I say yes."

Leonard raised an incredulous eyebrow. "Then will you undo my hands?"

"No."

"Right, that was worth it," Leonard snorted. "I'm not hungry today, James."

"Yeah, well, you need to eat." Jim was still taken aback by the way this man, his _captive_ , managed to look so regal in the face of his own captivity. There were nights that Jim dreamed of having that bearing himself, of being able to command men to do what he wanted. There were other, better, nights where he dreamed of using that same power over McCoy himself, taking what he wanted from the man and leaving the pleasure-soaked remains of his regal bearing shaking on the floor.

But it was all a pipe dream.

Leonard took another small bite of the sandwich, chewing thoughtfully as he studied Jim's face.

"They say you're a doctor," Jim offered, the conversational door swinging wide in the wind.

"Yeah, well, I would be." McCoy smiled, and really it _was_ a charming smile, tyranny or no. "I have the schooling and the fancy diploma. Never practiced, though."

"So why go through with it?"

Leonard laughed. "Father says we all need our uses. So he has a medical degree, I have a medical degree, I suspect Joanna-"

The name, Joanna, hung heavily in the air. McCoy had gone without mentioning his daughter once in the span of his captivity. Jim had managed to avoid the small pitfalls of their real lives, and neither had asked for details.

They sat awkwardly for a moment, the barely-eaten sandwich forgotten in Jim's hand.

Finally, Leonard broke the silence stretching into infinity. "Could I have some water?"

"Yeah," Jim pressed the canteen to Leonard's lips and he drank as though he was trying to wash the taste of Joanna's name from his mouth.

"You love your daughter a lot," Jim said as Leonard stopped, gasping for air.

"I don't want to talk about her."

"Of course not." Jim stood, dropping the sandwich into the grime on the floor. "You want to see your family again, Leonard? So do I."

Leonard felt his jaw drop as that passed through his consciousness - his daughter, James' brother. They weren't the same, never the same, couldn't be equated. The math was bad, somewhere, but Leonard couldn't find the error.

He was still gawking at Jim, feeling like a confused school kid, like he was still trying to understand where the world had gone when the bombs fell, when his world turned dark. It took a minute for Leonard to find his feet again, lying on the floor, but he felt the fabric when the shock subsided. He'd been blindfolded again, and he couldn't do anything but listen, once more, to the retreating footsteps.

* * *

With the blindfold was on, Leonard was never sure who was standing guard over him. At first, after Jim had unceremoniously blinded him, he tried to raise conversations with his captors, asking who was there, asking for news, asking for anything he could think of. If he was lucky, someone might grunt in reply. If he wasn't, silence. It was a jarring change from the easy flow of conversation he and Jim had before and he deeply missed the sense that maybe Jim cared for him.

Leonard felt himself going slowly insane, he thought, not seeing, not knowing. All he had to go on was the vague hints in footsteps and touches of hands - Ny's, it seemed, Ny's cold fingers for days, where was James? - and he began to lose what tenuous hold he'd had on hope, finishing the fantasies of his own funeral, an empty casket being lowered by weeping subjects, his daughter having to comprehend, at the age of seven, what it meant when they told her Daddy wasn't coming home.

It killed him a little, and he hated James for it, him and his dumb partner.

Finally, finally, finally, James came back. Leonard knew rationally it had only been a day and a half - no more than 36 hours, he had been fed three times - but it felt like an emotional lifetime, full of coffins and funerals and tears.

The first touch of James' calloused palms was somehow soothing, a thought Leonard wasn't willing to dwell on. Still, his body responded to the rough brush of skin-on-skin, his heart rate quickening.

"James?"

"You can call me Jim."

"You came back," Leonard said, feeling a twinge of regret or maybe disgust at how needy his voice sounded to his ears. Like he was begging for scraps at this man's feet.

"Where did you think I was going?"

"Away?"

Jim laughed, and Leonard remembered, vaguely, the times he had thought that this man was arrogant or unattractive or anything other than wonderful.

He was wonderful. Leonard blinked into the light as the blindfold fell off his face, smiling up at Jim like he was sunlight and warmth and--Leonard shook his head. This was so, so fucked. Jim held out one of his edible units of time, gesturing with his free hand that Leonard should help himself.

"I can't go anywhere, Bones," Jim sighed as Leonard took a bite. "I have to get my brother back. And that means I see this through."

Leonard swallowed. "Bones?"

"Yeah, like sawbones. Cause you're a doctor," Jim grinned and Leonard felt his cheeks begin to burn. He hated that this kid, his _captor_ , could have that effect on him.

"I have a name; I have like, six. You couldn't choose one of those?"

Jim laughed at him. "Yeah, 'Prince Leonard Horatio David Rutledge McCoy,' I remember. Tell me which one of those really suits you, and I'll use it. But here's the thing: you're not that guy, not the guy in the dress uniform at the parades. You're Bones."

Leonard slowly took another bite. He didn't like this man, taking parts of him and decided which were going to be kept. It itched, sort of, like a spider on the back of his neck.

"Don't call me that."

Jim's eyes narrowed and somewhere in the furrow of his brow, Leonard suddenly understood the idea of "staring daggers" at someone.

"Sorry, your highness," Jim sneered. "Hate to offend your royal sensibilities."

Leonard sighed and took another bite of the sandwich. It wasn't worth it. "Call me whatever, then," he sighed, "As long as you promise to let me go."

Jim didn't meet his eyes, and Leonard felt the bits of sandwich like lead weights in his stomach. Part of him, the curious scientist, wanted to ask what that look meant, if he was ever going to be free again. But the rational part of him, the part that had been trained in things like etiquette and manners, knew better.

"Please, Jim." Leonard didn't even realize he was saying it, but the words were there, heavy in the air between them, and the goddamn kid still wouldn't meet his eye. "Just don't orphan my daughter."

Jim nodded, but he was still silent, so Leonard took a bite of his sandwich, and another, and when he was done, the food unappetizing but sustaining, Jim brushed the crumbs off his shirt and turned to leave.

"Jim?"

He paused in the doorway, one arm braced against the wall and his back taught like a band, but he didn't turn.

"Bones?"

"I'm sorry."

Jim tilted his head back to study something fascinating on the wall. "I know," he whispered, and the door swung shut behind him.

* * *

Nyota saw what Jim was doing.

She knew he thought she was oblivious, that she didn't know what was going on. She knew he was trying to tiptoe around it, this thing he and McCoy were doing, this weird dance. But she saw it, and the way she saw it, he was headed for trouble.

It wasn't as though she hadn't talked to the Prince herself. He was a chatty man, apparently, and if she didn't engage him, most times he would just start telling her stories about nothing. She tried to ignore him, tried to not listen, because above all else Nyota needed to remind herself that this was the man she would someday kill.

They'd only had the captive for a week and a half, but their cramped little hideaway didn't hold as many secrets as Jim thought. So she knew, yes, that Jim and the captive were forming _bonds_ , and she knew that this was what would get both of them buried in shallow graves, bullet holes between their eyes, like her father had been.

"You know," she said as she sat next to Jim, around the middle of the day eleven. He was reading the paper, carefully scanning for any hidden messages, any indication in the articles about Prince Leonard's kidnapping that someone had received their ransom notes and recognized them as real. "You and the Prince seem to be developing a... rapport."

Jim peered at her over the top of his cracked reading glasses. "Yes, and?"

"And it's not a good thing."

"Not a good thing for who?"

Nyota took a deep breath. Jim was lucky he was good at tactics, because he was annoying as fuck otherwise. "For any of us," she sighed. "What do you think is going to happen?"

Jim raised an eyebrow. "When?"

"You become best friends with the Prince, they let your brother go, and then what? You think he won't turn around and hunt you down? You think he'll take you back to the palace to be his dirty little secret and Pike won't have you killed?"

"Shut up." Jim replied. If Nyota had believed he was a violent man she might have been cowed, but she knew him better than that. He would only hear her if she was blunt, otherwise, he'd fight it until the truth sank home.

"He has a wife. And a kid. You think he could ever care about some second-rate mechanic who _kidnapped_ him? You're common, Jim, and a terrorist. If he does care, it's because he thinks you're the one who's too soft to kill him. And you know? He's right." Nyota knew her words would wound, but she was beyond caring about Jim's feelings. This was about more than him, more than his stupid brother and his stupid pain. This was about _people_ who were killed and children who were orphaned; about the people of Snowy Owl chafing under the McCoy Regime, about a little girl in the falling ash, holding her mother's severed leg.

"Fuck you," Jim growled, and Nyota spread her arms wide.

"You couldn't handle this, Jimmy," she growled.

"You need a good fuck," he shot, the newspaper reduced to wadded up pulp in his clenched hands.

"So do you!" Nyota found herself shouting. "But you're not my type."

The silence hung heavy between them for a moment, each staring angrily at the other before, after a second and a half of tension, Jim began to giggle.

"What are we doing?"

"Yelling," Nyota said. She couldn't help but grin at Jim, in all of his goofiness. "It's good for the blood pressure in these situations."

Jim flat-out laughed, and Nyota felt the tension slip from her shoulders for just a fraction of a second, like it was totally normal to scream at your partner-in-crime about his inappropriate relationship with your hostage.

"I'm going to go get the evening paper," Jim said, reaching for his jacket. "And something for dinner, okay?"

Nyota nodded. "Jim-"

He held up a hand. "I know, keep my head down. And I'll think about what you said. I just- I need some air, okay?"

"Yeah, be careful."

Jim smiled again, but this time it didn't seem to reach his eyes, and Nyota felt that tension coiling back through her shoulders and up her neck to settle in her jaw as he left. Sighing heavily, she sat next to the hostage's door, quietly beginning to take her gun apart, imagining Spock's broad hands guiding her, his calm voice, and the love she knew he felt enveloping her. It was the only thing she had, the gun, the only thing that linked her to him. She hoped, whatever dumb thing Jim did, whether or not his Princely flirtations did them any good in the long run, he had something to remember this by.

* * *

Nyota was right, but Jim hated her a little for it.

They'd talked before they set off on their adventure, had a meeting where they discussed what would happen _after_. No details, in case one was caught, but Jim had realized then that he couldn't just walk back to the wide planes of the midlands when he got his brother back – he, Sam and Aurelan would have to leave the McCoy family's reach, They'd have to flee the Directorate, West or South, until they ran out of land.

Jim had been okay with that. He figured once he had his brother back, once he had a family, one place was as good as any other. He'd figured that nothing was holding him to the Directorate or the plains beyond sentimentality. And then he slammed a burlap sack over this man's head and turned his world the wrong way around.

He wasn't sure he was willing - able, even - to walk away anymore. He wasn't sure he wanted McCoy to go back to his life, to forget Jim. He wasn't sure Sam and Aurelan were going to be enough anymore.

They had to be, because this was going to end. This was all going to end.

Jim hated her for it, but Uhura was right. He was setting them both up for something terrible with this fondness, and it had to stop.

The next few days, cresting the wave into the second week with no word from Pike, were an exercise in frustration.

Jim and Leonard still talked when they were alone, but Jim called him Prince, or Leonard, never Bones, though Bones fit the man, more so than any of his given names. There was something skeletal about the man, a sense of emotion and intellect that somehow lacked that thing which gels _aspects_ into a full human being. If Jim were honest, and he absolutely would not allow himself to be, he thought he was that thing, for Leonard, and that the Prince could be that thing for him.

No, that wasn't something Jim could admit.

He hated the rediscovered formality. He found himself getting snappish with Uhura, who wasn't feeling friendly towards him as it was, given the silence from the royal camp.

The silence broke on day seventeen and the world stopped for Jim.

* * *

The ransom notes had been specific - they'd named a newspaper to advertise in and told Pike to use the title "Chimera for Sale." The problem, naturally, came in what was after the title. Nonsense, bits about pricing and condition, as directed. And then, at the bottom, the words "We Do Not Negotiate."

"How long has this been running?" she asked, looking up at Jim, who had handed her the paper moments earlier.

"Showed up today," he sighed. "What's the move?"

Nyota closed her eyes. A lifetime of training, planning waiting. Six months with Jim, getting every move down for the fucking abduction. Seventeen days holed up in two and a half rooms with Jim and the Prince. And a flat fucking no, nothing else.

Nyota felt something snap. She gripped her gun, at her side like always, most loyal fucking thing in her life, and opened the door to their captive's room. The Prince was sleeping, his hands twisted uncomfortably behind him. Nyota was shocked at the man's face. She realized that she'd never really looked at him, never noticed the way his brows sat heavy over his eyes, or the now-bushy beard scrawled across his chin. He looked peaceful, as sleepers do, but he also looked something else, something nameless, like _human_ but less silly sounding.

"Wake up," she barked, nudging him roughly with her foot.

The prince groaned and rolled onto his back, his face contorting in equal parts confusion and pain as his fingers bent under his weight.

"What?" he grunted, looking at her through heavily lidded eyes. She lowered the barrel of her gun, leveled it between his eyes.

"Heard from your buddy, Pike," she said, disengaging the safety. This was going to happen. His blood would be on her hands, like she always knew it would be.

The Prince didn't say anything. He just stared at her with sad eyes.

"Ny," Jim muttered, as she head him draw his guns from those ridiculous shoulder holsters he loved so much.

"Shut up," she snapped, and she felt, rather than saw, him point them at her. "If you're going to shoot me," she growled, "then shoot me. But I'm not the one who killed your nephew."

Jim didn't cock his guns, and it occurred to Nyota that she wasn't sure if he even kept them loaded. The Prince watched it all, his eyes still stupidly wide. Nyota felt something in those eyes, something she knew she should hate. Something like pity.

"Why should I let you live?"

The prince did his best to shrug. "That's not really up to me, is it?"

"Convince me that your life is worth more that my mother's, Prince. Tell me why you took her and my father and my lover."

The face that had looked so peaceful in sleep was now furrowed and wrinkled, with pain, maybe, or just exhaustion.

"I have never killed a person in my life," he said, after a long moment staring into the barrel of her gun. "I don't make laws and I don't enforce them. Not yet. And if you kill me today, not ever."

Nyota blinked and took half a step closer, her gun now nudging Leonard's forehead. "Explain."

Jim's breathing quickened behind her, and Nyota tried to remember if she'd ever seen Jim point his gun at someone, if he'd ever mentioned shooting anything more than tin cans on a fence.

"I'm not my father," Leonard said, each syllable measured and steeped in counterfeit calm. "He makes mistakes. He does things I don't agree with, and I speak against them. But you're so busy hating the crown, the things I _represent_ that you're willing to off me to make a point. Head too far up your ass to recognize that things fucking change. So shoot me, Ny. Kill a man who has done you no harm because of the fucking sins of the goddamn father. And then when Pike takes the bombs from their storehouses and reminds Snowy Owl what the end of the world was fucking like, then you know that it was because of you, and your fucking irrational bullshit."

The Prince stared at her in fury, the indignities of the last seventeen days flashing across his face, and Nyota took a step back, her gun pointing limply towards the floor. He was right. He was fucking right, and in that moment she hated him more than she'd ever hated before.

But that wasn't going to solve anything. It wasn't going to rebuild the studio or reunite her with Spock or liberate Snowy Owl. Nyota stared into the Prince's eyes, trying to read something there, trying to find an answer.

She turned away.

"You have an hour," she said abstractly, aiming at Jim but not caring anymore, just not giving half a crap. "If I come back and he's here, I'll kill you both."

Head hung in defeat, Nyota started toward the door. She couldn't have said, if someone had asked, when it had happened. But at some point, she changed, he changed, and it was Jim's fault. It had to be Jim's fault.

"Wait."

The Prince's voice stopped her, but she didn't have the energy to turn back and face him.

"What's your name? I - when I'm King, I'll repay your kindness. I will. But I need more than 'Ny'."

The idea was insane. It was preposterous, telling him now, at the end. But Nyota wasn't sure what else she had to lose.

"Uhura. Nyota Uhura. Daughter of Penda and Haki. And if you send assassins, Prince Leonard, I'll send them back in body bags."

She smiled, then, feeling something like the spirit of Spock's training flare in her belly.

He would be proud of her mercy, Spock would. She had lost touch with that part of him recently, the part that was a vegetarian and, while he recognized the necessity of killing in certain situations and the logic of being prepared for the worst things that might come, would never have acted in cold blood. Not even against the Prince. Nyota's step had a lightness to it as she left the room, then, and the door clicking shut behind her sounded less like an ending and more like a peel of laughter.

* * *

Jim cut the bonds on Leonard's wrists as soon as Nyota had left them, a flick of his wrist helping his knife slice through the coarse fibers.

"I'm free?"

Jim nodded. "I can take you somewhere, if you need, to find your way back home."

Leonard nodded, rubbing at his chafed wrists. "I don't even know what city we're in."

Jim laughed, light and short, because it was funny, it was so funny and sad. Leonard hardly knew what he was doing before it was done, a step closing the gap between their bodies and bringing their lips together.

Jim reacted with shock; hands finding Leonard's shoulders and pushing him back, off, away.

"Jim?"

"There's too much-" Jim's voice was clouded with emotion, "Your wife, Bones, and Uhura's coming back and I kidnapped you-"

Leonard kissed him again, pulling the other man close by the stupid suspenders he wore.

This time Jim responded, a hand tangling in Leonard's hair and lips parting just a little before he pulled back.

"What are you doing?"

"Kissing you. Was it not obvious?" Leonard laughed, and Jim looked at him like he was insane.

"I- this is a bad idea," Jim sputtered, pushing Leoanrd's hands off his shift as he took a step backwards.

"You think my judgment is impaired," Leonard said, "You think I'm reacting to the kindness I perceive-"

"No," Jim shook his head. "I think you're married and I kidnapped you and that, even if none of that was true, Uhura is coming back in an hour and you need to get out of here."

They stared at each other for a long moment, and Leonard thought he could feel the heat pool between them. He imagined this happening any other situation, any other world or life or time limit, some kind of life where it wasn't this complicated, and then

Jim glanced down at his shoes and then slowly ran a finger along the grip on his holstered gun.

"You're still in Atlanta," he said. "Southwest of East Point. I'll take you to the old airport, you can catch some civilization there."

"Jim, I-"

"Promise me one thing, Bones, one: if my brother is alive, if he's somewhere in one of your prisons, tell him I love him."

Leonard nodded. There was nothing else to say. He straightened the cuffs of his tattered, once-white jacket to cover the rope burn, took a deep breath, and offered Jim his hand.

Jim took it, the heavy weight of Bones' wedding ring rubbing the inside of his palm.

* * *

**

EPILOGUE: THREE YEARS LATER

**

Nyota Uhura was as drunk as she'd ever been.

It was the day of King Leonard's coronation, and even in Snowy Owl, people were celebrating, though whether it was to welcome the new king or celebrate the death of the old was anyone's guess.

She stumbled back to her flat in Revolutionary Square, staggering and tipsy, hand on her knife. Since her encounter with the Prince three years before, she was always ready to be killed.

The man sitting in her living room was familiar and alcohol dulled her reflexes, which helped him stay alive.

"Hello, Nyota," Jim smiled, his clothing still reminiscent of a confused little boy playing dress up in his daddy's closet.

"Jim."

"I'm here on business," he offered, and she eyed the place where she stashed her gun, wondering if he'd had time to remove it before he settled in.

"Oh, relax," he laughed. "I'm not here to kill you. I'm here," he stood, stretching like a cat, "to offer you a job. You know, Leonard is getting rid of Pike, thinks I might make a decent captain of his guards. And he wants to form a coalition on an independent Snowy Owl. See what's possible. He wants you to head it."

Nyota stared. Jim Kirk. Leonard McCoy. Snowy Owl. It all swam through her brain like fog. She was not prepared to deal with this, not tonight.

"I," she told this man from the past, "am drunk and sleepy. I'm going to bed. If you're going to kill me, do that. If not, come back in the morning, and we'll talk."

She nodded at the man, moved to her kitchen to retrieve her gun from its cabinet, and went to her room, shutting and locking the door.

\---

Outside, in the living room, Jim Kirk waited. He was good at waiting. He had waited three years for the plan he and Leonard had concocted in their last moments to come true, had waited for word of his brother and Aurelan, still alive in the system, had waited his whole life to find someone like Leonard. Once Nyota agreed to join them, it was going to be a new world.

They were going to fix it, together.


End file.
